The present invention relates to a foldable or collapsible tent, and more particularly to a connector device for retaining a pair of pivotally connected poles of a foldable tent.
For novice campers and camping families, among others, foldable tents are a popular alternative to conventional assemble-to-use tents. The cover and frame assembly of foldable tents are permanently attached to each other, i.e., preassembled, and are typically sold with a central hub and a plurality of poles pivotally attached to the hub. These tents are commonly referred to as “instant tents,” “one-touch tents” or “pop-up tents,” and erecting and collapsing the tent is easy and less time consuming than conventional assemble-to-use tents. Instant tents are particularly advantageous for smaller tents because a minimal number of poles, typically four, are required and thus erecting and collapsing the instant tent is quite simple. However, with larger tents, instant tents pose several problems.
For example, more poles and/or larger poles as well as a larger cover are required to support larger instant tents and thus erecting, collapsing and folding the instant tent could be challenging to the user. Specifically, the increased number of poles and pole sections requires extra steps to erect and collapse the tent. Moreover, the only method in which the larger instant tents can be folded is by surrounding the larger cover around the entire collapsed frame assembly. Because there is no systematic method of folding larger instant tents, it is difficult to consistently fold the tent into a tight, compact bundle.
As another example, larger components and an increased variety of parts are required to manufacture larger instant tents. For instance, larger parts are required to manufacture the central hub to accommodate the increased number of poles and poles of different lengths must be used to accommodate for the increased length of larger tents. Therefore, the instant tent is bulkier, material costs are increased significantly for the manufacturer, and increased manpower is necessary to assemble the variety of parts.
Another problem associated with larger instant tents is that the use of a central hub limits the overall configuration of the instant tent because the overall length of the tent is limited by the length of the poles which can securely extend from the hub. Therefore, a tent with a more elongated configuration cannot be achieved.
However, with larger foldable tents (and sometimes with smaller foldable tents as well) another problem exists in that the overall alignment of each tent pole could be compromised due to the longer poles that are utilized to accommodate for the size of the tent. Because each foldable section of the pole is longer than usual, in the event a portion of the pole is rotatably displaced even slightly along a longitudinal axis of the pole, that displacement is transferred throughout the pole and overall alignment is affected. For example, even with a small rotatable displacement at the upper portion of the pole, the displacement at the lower portion of the pole is magnified because of the length of the pole. This effect is particularly critical for the pole joint or connector device which couples the pole sections as the connector device connecting pole sections at a mid or lower portion of the pole are susceptible to misalignment. Specifically, when alignment of the pole is displaced—often times occurring when the tent is folded and further maneuvered to make more compact for storage—the position of the connector device could also shift such that each folded pole section is positioned in a reversed manner. When opening the tent and extending the pole sections from this defective folded configuration, unless a user realigns the pole sections and connector device prior to opening and extending the pole sections, it is possible that the user could mistakenly forcibly unfold the pole sections in the incorrect direction resulting in damage to the connector device.